IG - current status and feedback Thread - Ultimate Apocalypse Mod (DOW SS) for Dawn of War

Related to the recent update:
Nerfing IG should be that last thing on any todo list ! They already have massive issues with morale and survivability.

The sole unit that's OP in the IG's army is currently the Demolisher tank and that one wasn't nerfed enough ! What the Demolisher Tank does:
-ignores obstacles when attacking: can attack from and to positions where other units would struggle because of a lack of line of fire
-fast rate of fire (should have a slow one because it's structure damage is so good and it deals are damage as well as good morale damage to enemy squads)
-never misses despite being a siege unit (should have a slight miss just like a Basilisk)
-very good damage vs structures, good to mediocre damage vs vehicles, aircraft (that's right: this siege unit can attack aicraft with it's main gun !), squads (against which it deals area damage and morale damage)
-slows units' movement speed around impact area
-huge range

The IG's Punsiher tank is useless right now because the Inferno tank is faster moving, also useful vs infantry but also vs demons and structures and drops enemy morale better. Meanwhile the Vanquisher tank deals better damage vs heroes, tanks and aircraft while overall not being much worse than the Punisher. The Punisher would need something special, like dropping enemy armor the longer it fires at them or slowing them down while attacking them. Also bolter vs flamer upgrades should be a decision: bolter = better single target damage; flamer = better for area damage. Currently flamer is better because it never misses, also drops morale and does area damage while the bolter can't compete and that's the case for most units.

IG's garisson ability needs an upgrade for damage later on, if not 2 or 3 even (apocalypse tier still looks pretty empty on IG's side) as it turns into minor, ingoreable damage extremely fast and can also be outranged.

The Sentinel walker's main gun isn't good enough vs infantry. It should be an excellent choice against infantry squads (Cultists) while currently it's something between good to mediocre and the weapon isn't even mediocre vs anything else, not even vs heavy infantry. The flamer and autocannon upgrade are well but the Lascannon deals disappointing damage vs vehicles and structures compared to the missile launcher while it should be an upgrade for that one, as it's only available later on but neither it's range (roughly the same as the missile launcher) nor it's "never misses" ability make up for it's lack of damage - it's outperformed by the missile launcher vs vehicles and some structures. The Sentinel's plasma upgrade is actually a downgrade that you pay for because despite dealing area damage and a good amount of it it misses by far and a lot so that this doesn't even make up for the weapon's plus sides by catapult this choice right into garbage tier territory.

The IG's sandbag guy infantry (always forget the name) still has a HP bug when changing in an out of sandbag mode, losing HP once leaving it if any armor upgrades have been researched. The unit also sometimes upon deploying warps back to it's previous spot or turns into the wrong direction. It'd also be nice to see the weapon upgrade that this unit has, once it's in mobile mode again, which currently can't be seen, unless the unit is deployed again.

Imperial Brawlers are still useless and should be renamed to Comissar Cadets. Even with all upgrades and a priest attached to get the attack bonus maxed out their damage, survivability and usefulness on the battlefield is still questionable. To compare: Riders are fast and cheap to reinforce, move fast and can use grenades. Ogryns are just lethal in melee combat and also useful vs vehicles and structures. Meanwhile the Cadets die easily, can be knocked around by any unit that can do that, have morale issues, are too expensive to reinforce, it takes too long to reinforce them, their damage and survivability is always questionable, they get no grenades but also no other squad members like banner carrier or medic and their attacks, even if upgraded with power fists, have no special (or noticeable) effect on any enemy unit. Imo these need major buffs because I've tried to put them to good use in a variety of situations but they struggle to compete even at a mediocre level. Reinforcing these should both be cheaper and faster. Their damage should be better if a Comissar is part of their squad (already trainable via squad menu). The units should either regenerate health faster while in combat (zeal) or get +1 squad unit that isn't a Cadet per tech tier, so that they can train a medic and banner carrier on their squad too with +2 tiers. 1 layer of ranged damage protection on them, always active, would also help with survival and justify keeping their high reinforcement costs (but not the high time - this needs to be lowered !) and knockback protection is a must have to be on a level with other melee oriented units. As melee units these are meant to tie up other melee units instead of having those attack the IG's ranged units as well as relevant ranged units of the enemy but currently all they do is die and getting knocked around while reinforcing too slow and costing a lot. Their damage observed vs infantry, vehicles and structures, fully upgraded and with a priest attached wasn't ever impressive either. Maybe have Power Fists disable the special abilities of units hit for a short time and slightly EMP vehicles, adding up to a full EMP lock on multiple hits ? I don't know, this unit desperately needs a role that works for it.

For the Riders I wish their squad leader would have a rally ability at tier1. Also Rider versions of banner carrier (tier2) and medic (tier3) and better grenade recharge time (tier4) would be nice.

Handling the Karskin Airborne Veterans doesn't feel good. They're basically regular Kasrkin but stealthed. In return their squad support unit choices are awful. They either lack vision, because their Vox Operator doesn't increase sight, as that should be the case, morale, health regen or stealth detection. While they're good vs other infantry they're not too good and the same is the case vs everything else. If anything goes wrong they're mostly screwed despite their health and damage because of their awful squad support unit options (or the lack of), their lack of mobility and versatility (as they also can't receive any weapon upgrades). As with most other infantry squads their explosive charge drop has too little range too so that it might cause them trouble to use that one without damaging themselves. Unlike regular Kasrkin they don't get a free extra grenade with improved range. This type of infantry feels klunky like no other.

Everything the Taurox (suppoer vehicle & transport with unit train ability) can currently do should be transfered to the IG's Chimera tank (non-Kronos version) - but require a combination of tiers and tech unlocks to become accessible bit by bit by teching up. The Chimera already IS a transport and a fast one, unlike the Taurox, while being a paper tank in return for that but one that's at least armored with either flamer or bolter. The Taurox never really fit it: It's constructed from a structure that's available too late only. The IG needs infantry support early on ! I also don't need 3 kinds of support vehicles that do pretty much the same ! Scrap the Taurox, transfer it's useful parts to the little used Chimera and reduce that unit's vehicle cap cost to 1 because it's a paper tank that can only deal with infantry unlike the Kronos pattern that costs the same cap amount, has the same abilities but can also deal with structures and vehicles somewhat while being armored.

The Marauder bomber still bugs out after a few bomb drops and becomes unusable.
The Gunship still has a weird attack animation and it's population cost is far overpriced compared to it's actual usefulness, speed and survivability.

IG sniper weapons aren't good enough. They're being specialized anti infantry weapons that aren't good enough vs heavy infantry but don't just oneshot mere infantry either. This needs a damage ugprade in both variants as these anti (heavy) infantry limited weapons are outperformed by basically every other choice that is also usable against (heavy) infantry. Rate of fire and damage need to improve in return for having a limited anti (heavy) infantry role. They're also pretty expensive compared to the other weapon upgrades (more than twice the price). So they need to be good and not equal or worse (which is even true if just used as fire support & morale breaker - flamers do better vs infantry, plasma gun / melta vs heavy infantry and also vehicles and structures).

Walls shouldn't be able to have units enter them, as that's currently the case as these should not be accessible structures by their concept.

Of the Baneblade tank versions the Stormlord (the one with the 2 autocannons vs infantry) is descriped as a dedicated anti infantry tank version but it can't even detect assassins running past it. If dealing with (heavy) infantry this unit should be a beast to make up for it's relic cost, being higher than that of a normal Baneblade, and for it's more narrow role (only useful vs (heavy) infantry). But the unit doesn't really impress. It can't detect stealth units so it needs assistance vs Dark Eldar, it takes about the same anti vehicle damage as the other units. Infantry, such as Dark Eldar infantry, may happily leave and life because attacking anything doesn't slow down the units under fire. Continuous attacks also don't shred through enemy armor so that this unit becomes useful against other targets over time at least. It can also only focus fire and not put several squads under pressure at once. The morale breaking is only in the tooltip but not on the field - that value is actually low.

Of various IG squads the support units (medic, banner carrier etc.) that can be trained at the squad instead of needing to be attached don't scale with the squad properly and are affected by either lack of health, armor, movespeed, knockback immunity or damage output. I've also noticed that units like Psyker and Priest die easily despite their good health - maybe pump up their armor a bit as the tech tiers go up ? Otherwise reinforcing them should be a squad menu thing instead of having to constantly fiddle with the HQ and unit drops via Communications Tower or structure transporttation network and then fiddling around on the field with attaching the unit to the right squad.

Comissars should be able to execute squad members at tier0 already. Either that or disallow Dark Eldar to have increased morale drop until they reach tier1. You can't win a single battle against these as IG early on otherwise with the lack of vehicle access and lack of morale restore too.

The General's squad units should be elite status - meaning some extra health, armor damage compared to the regular versions, maybe scale with some of his upgrades, if that is possible. They're affected by knockback which makes them quite ineffective and die too easy compared to other heroes.

An upgrade for minefields would also be nice at some certain tech tiers, to be able to construct them faster, then cheaper, lastly to have them deal more damage. PS: Can't Sentinels create Minefields instead of having Tech Priests do this ? Would be nice for traps and securing areas.

There's also still a bug with the 2 infantry heroes that can be trained at the barracks: If you load any of them into a transport or structure the bonus that they granted is lost (extra relic points / morale & void shields / HP / infantry- or vehicle cap), even when unloading them again and the only solution to this is to kill the unit, build that unit again and pay for the upgrade again. So while there's that special tank that they can train and that's meant to be entered by either one of them to receive some nice extra values that's a no-go if you want to keep your bonus values. It's a broken mechanic !

An upgrade for the tank traps and structures in general at tier1 would also be nice, making them inflict a bit of damage to melee units attacking them: razor wire.

Doctrins: How about having these ALL available as a mechanic of mobilizing the Guard: infantry doctrine with the 1st HQ upgrade - when it's all about infantry battle anyways - but that requires certain infantry upgrades to be unlocked; similar thing for vehicle at the 2nd HQ upgrade, aircraft at the next tech tier, artillery at the next and titan at the next. I don't really see a point in having to pick one when the IG is an actual army where you can't spam a certain type of unit alone to win - or it would be stupid to tedious to do so. Actually the IG needs all of it's arsenal. And I'd be proud if I could.

Walls: Across all factions these are too fast to construct and while I see the interest to arm them their HP is to be considered when doing so, meaning: upgrading the wall with a weapon should cost more then just a penny and take a long time. Try the following: add 3-5 upgrades to each wall type, each increasing that wall's HP and armor bit by bit, but only for that single unit alone. That way walls could be used to reinforce an area, but not immediately, that'd cost resources and time while initially there could at least be the weakest wall version to have ~something~. Makes it less of a 0 and 1 game where you either have something or you don't and more about a manageable defense and counter reaction. It'd not be wrong either if melee units could reduce structure armor the more often they attacked the same one (not permanently but while the attacks keep coming).

IG's resource caps are currently weird: While early on they use infantry and need a lot of requisition for training these units, reinforcing them and the general base buildup they later on need power a lot for techs, vehicles and some special abilities. Yet the IG's power resource caps out at 800, which contradicts with the Thermo Generato's Apocalypse upgrade of +10% power income, which mostly doesn't work well with this setup. Especially on multiple of these generators that upgrade is useles in terms of the power bonus it grants (while still being very useful for it's other effects but still that one doesn't work well). So either each of this should increase the cap (if that is even possible) or the cap itself should be increased right away. That'd be far more helpful.

Overall I still miss some Apoclypse options on the IG's side. All they get is their big cannon and the Thermo Generator's upgrades but nothing interesting for units or even access to new units for the most part. It mostly feels like a Basilisk Magnus tech tier because there's hardly something else.

Edited by: UsernameUsernameRev

Yeah, Demolishers don't work at all like they're supposed to. On the tabletop and in the lore they're short range direct fire, but I can (for instance) build Demolishers on Deadman's Crossing and bombard the structures around the relic with them from my base over the ridge. That shouldn't be a thing they can do.

All baneblades are underpowered in offensive capabilities pretty much.

I find that all models of the Leman Russ tanks, whilst not the most powerful things ever, are very much capable of dishing out punishment and living up to their stated damage-per-minute.

Now compare the Leman Russ tanks to their corresponding Baneblade version.

The baneblades do a quarter (sometimes worse) of the DPM that the baneblades do. The baneblade armed with the plasma blastgun (a TITAN weapon!) does less than one quarter of the damage that the plasma cannon armed Leman Russ does.

As such, the Baneblades (which should be your go-to heavy armour in the mid to late game or at least the heavy core of your armoured forces) are useless against titans, heroes, buildings, advanced infantry (i've had baneblades get dominated by a team of terminators before) etc.

yellowberryalexkahn
You've a typo there:
"The baneblades do a quarter (sometimes worse) of the DPM that the baneblades do."
Guess that should be:
"The Baneblades do a quarter (sometimes worse) of the DPM that the Leman Russ tanks do."

The thing that works for the Baneblades currently is how tanky they are and that should be considered when asking for more damage output.
I view it more as a design issue that most of these added Baneblade versions can't attack any melee attackers and thus can't defend themselves, deal no area damage or if they do deal area damage they damage surrounding structures, vehicles and units of the own army (far) more than the advanced melee units of the enemy that they're attacking, thus causing more harm than help.
Such advanced melee units that suffer almost no ranged damage are a thing the IG can only counter with Psykers (their special ability), Ogryns (with Priest attached) and nerve gas. The Assassins are pretty weak vs enemy super melee units that have 2 shield layers (2 blue shield icons) and a lot of armor and regeneration on top of it.
As I already mentioned the Leman Russ Punisher lacks a working role why I suggested supression fire (slowing enemies under attack; dealing area damage if using the main weapon) and armor reduction (removes blue shield icons that protect from ranged damage) when continuously attacking the same unit. This would allow the Assassins to deal damage against such previously unkillable advanced melee units once their shield layers are gone.
How well the titan counters do I simply don't know as I couldn't test them yet. There are 2: Laser Tank Destroyer; Baneblade version "Shadowsword Titanicus". At least the Shadowsword's special attack was impressive but it costs a lot of energy per use and, as previously mentioned, the IG has a too low energy cap, capping out at 800 while the vehicles and research demand more later on, when it's not about infantry spam and base construction anymore like in the early stages of the game.
Vs structures I feel the Baneblades do well. Could be a bit better but the IG doesn't really struggle with that: Infantry with Plasma Guns / Meltas, Ogryns, Earthshaker Rounds, Medusa (with main weapon upgrade), Sandbad guy with Lasgun upgrade, Heavy Weapons Team, Leman Russ Demolisher / Executioner / Annihilator, Laser Tank Destroyer, infantry explosive charges, Marauder Bomber, Earthshaker Platform all do well vs structures. So no worries on that end.
Vs heroes Assassins, sniper squads, Ogryns (with Priest's special ability), Psykers, nerve gas, explosive charge spam, Earthshaker rounds, Leman Russ Vanquisher work well but heroes with multiple shield layers are a huge issue for the IG that they can't counter well with anything without investing (far) more than the enemy had to.

Something else:
Most weapons also lack any tooltip info whether they deal any area damage or not, if that damage does friendly fire or not, info about accuracy while standing still and while moving or running, if they're capable of attacking air units or not, if they have any special effects (ignores line of sight, EMP attack, ability disabling, poison, movespeed slow, armor reduction, knocking back units - missing in the unit description of units that can do this even without a weapon upgrade most often; and whatever else). The tooltip info that is already there is good for the most part but lacks.

There are also hotkey conflicts across the various units of the races, like the Kasrkin bonus grenade and regular grenade using the same hotkey.

Further playthroughs - things I label as important:
Baneblades:
-they actually have a searchlight visually attached to their model already and thus should reveal invisible units around them (not at full weapon range but medium)

Critical issues:
-the sandbag infantry (labeled "Heavy Weapons Suppression Team") lose health once they shift back from deployed to undeployed once health upgrades have been researched; they also block vehicles if they've received a move order in sandbag mode, as that causes pathfinding to count them as mobile units, making the vehicles wait for them to move away - which never happens, because they're stationary once deployed; they're not visually distinct enough from any regular Guardsman to find them in a large group of units, causing extended clicking and sorting of these units one by one whenever they're not saved in their own group number
-Imperial Riders: they sadly get mostly useless later on, except for their speed; I suggest they get a poison knife upgrade (passive after tech research), as the "Special Weapons Team" has, once the melee combat research has been made - and this upgrade should also increase their damage vs listening posts and power generators a bit by each tech tier; as they're meant harass their health should regenerate at a better rate after being out of combat for some time
-the Imperial Brawlers (should be renamed to Comissar Cadets again) currently rank as the worst unit in the entire Imperial Guard army (!); their damage is a bit better than of Imperial Riders, they have no knockback immunity and thus fail at both tasks: dealing damage and tying up enemy ranged infantry, their squad size doesn't increase while teching up (overlooked ?), their survivability is awful, their damage is very, very, very bad, even with all techs and a priest attached it's a pain to look at them trying to deal damage to anything, reinforcing them costs a fortune (overpriced !) and takes to long (especially the leader!); suggested change: make it so that researching moral upgrades decreases their reinforce time and -cost (also for the leader unit), which goes well with their concept idea of keeping morale up with executions; they need knockback immunity, no discussion, to do their job; the idea is that a Priest is attached to them, as they don't receive a damage buff like all the other units, unless this is the case - so they can't have a medic; this means that they should heal by dealing damage to enemies as well as at an increased rate after being out of combat for some time
-I don't know if that's intended but the Earthshaker platforms can't hit any moving target; their EMP upgrade is too weak too - takes 2-3x such per vehicle for a useful effect; there's also a bug: when a target is aquired and the platform needed to turn for this the 1st shot always misses, even if the target is a structure, thus large target and stationary; only already aquired targets that either stand still or move slow enough are hit properly
-the range at which infantry can throw their explosive charges that they can detonate manually needs to be increased because the IG's squad size increases per tech, making this harder and harder to use due to all the units in the way, as well as posing an ever greater risk to the own squad if the charge goes off due to area damage
-the Leman Russ Punisher needs bonus damage vs infantry heroes and vs infantry overall - single target bullet damage should always outperform the other Leman Russ tanks vs infantry & heavy infantry, which isn't the case currently; Inferno is already the choice vs non-heavy infantry spam and bonus damage vs demons would make sense on this one too; currently the only Leman Russ tanks that need to be build are the Vanquisher because of range, accuracy and being good vs everything and the Demolisher because it ignores terrain obstackles and just annihilates all structures at a huge range while also dealing area damage vs huge infantry squads; the most flawed is the plasma version which does area damage but also damages your own units as if it was artillery
-sniper rifles, once researched, still need their prices and damage to be adjusted depending on what type of infantry uses them - currently they all seem to have identical values
-all Kasrkin versions are an utter mess (!); the barracks trained version has huge morale and survivability issues, the airborn variant seems to have movespeed issues, especially inside cover granting craters; both lack vision range, which is far less than their weapon range; for the barracks trained variant their squad leader's Lasgun range ruins their attack sometimes because it's higher than Melta range, making the units stand outside Melta weapon range, with only the squad leader attacking with his Lasgun (remove that weapon, let this unit be a pure melee unit)
-squad attacheable units sometimes have for too low health (medic, flag)
-it says that it's possible to train up to 10 special squad attacheable units while it's only 8; the tooltip also doesn't mention that all the different squad attacheable units count towards that limit, so that I can't have 8 or 10 of each; EDIT: in fact there's a tech bug somewhere: some tech changes that limit that, at the beginning, is indeed 10, and then lowered by some tech to 8; not narrowed down yet which tech, though
-the special attacks of heroes and Vox Operators should scale in damage while teching up and also happen faster instead of with an often too huge delay; the range is also just copy & paste and not adapted to UA enemies, making this often useless (range need to be higher); these attacks should be of great destructive power, if called by one of the heroes, while the Vox Operator version should be a morale breaker and turret buster, mainly; that'd make the best sense and use-case
-the Marauder attacks are extremely earpiercing and annoying - their sounds should change or at least have their volume reduced (!)
-aircraft attack animations are still bugged
-in general: loading units into transports isn't a task that's reliably and fast performed by units but often takes an extended amount of time for seemingly no reason or the units fail at it
-the Chimera (basic versoin without extra cannon) should only cost 1 vehicle cap instead of 2, which is the same as it's superior variant; the weak variant only has paper armor anyway so it'd be nice if it'd not strain the vehicle cap as if it was an actual combat unit
-Laser Tank Destroyers need a damage buff - no matter what they're attacking other units are better; they have nothing to shine with; if they'd receive a nice damage boost vs enemy HQs and super structures they'd have a useful role
-the generic Leman Russ Tank that is built inside the basic factory ("Mechanized Command") should only cost 3 vehicle cap instead of 4 as the specialized versions of it and get access to smoke grenades and nerve gas, as these other variants
-there should be 2 more upgrades for Sentinels later on: one to reduce their cap cost from 2 to 1, so that they can still remain a relevant choice despite inferior combat values due to the cap cost, and one that sharpens the effect of the Sentinel weapon choices: the generic unupgraded fast firing weapon receiving a reload and damage bonus to become better vs infantry, the autocannon vs heavy infantry & economic structures, the missile launcher for more damage vs vehicles & structures but also more range, to make it a useful fire support choice, same with the Lascannon, which has more range, less damage, better accuracy and no knockback in comparison; the plasma upgrade needs an overhaul for accuracy anyway to stop the friendly fire damage, reduce the by far too extreme miss rate
-the Hellhound lacks survivability later on vs most unit - so that it can't be the intended frontline sprayer that it's supposed to be - needs something to increase it's hitpoint and armor values, eventually passive by tech tiers
-vehicles that can install a Heavy Stubber are often range-sabotaged by that upgrade, like the Hellhound: if ordered to attack the unit sometimes attacks at stubber range only, ignoring the superior main weapon entirely, not trying to get close to the enemy to fire it's main weapon; Stubber turrets shouldn't sabotage a unit's main weapon usage; EDIT: actually that's the case for other IG weapon systems too, like the Leman Russ Executioner (plasma tank), with the frontal Lascannon that has higher range than the main cannon, causing an attack-move to only attack with the frontal Lascannon but not with the main plasma gun
-the IG's garrisson feature needs both a range and damage upgrade as tech tiers are unlocked - it gets pretty useless pretty fast; same for firing ports inside vehicles (Stormblade !)
-the Heavy Weapons Support Team also suffers from the Kasrkin issue of vision range being lower than weapon range
-using generic grenades with infantry should have a lower cooldown timer - they're often too weak and useless, so being able to use them some more would add some value; or if they wouldn't block the timer on any other grenades
-firing the Shadowsword Titanicus' main cannon's special weapon shouldn't cost a thing, except for a cooldown; the unit is already a narrow use case and that is it's intentional role so don't add further hassle that's not even mentioned in the unit's tooltip
-Stormblade can't attack targets that melee attack it and deals area damage on friendly units, which is a no-go for it's intended role as fire support unit and Baneblade tank in both cases
-the Stormsword can't attack tagets that melee attack it
-the Stormlord is pretty bad and can't even detect stealth infantry while being an anti infantry specialized version
-the units that General Stubbs can add to his squad shouldn't be copy & paste variants of the generic existing ones, but elite versions that have better values, regeneration, cooldowns; I also don't see the point of ever adding the Kasrkin version, as that one has nothing of value to offer

Most issues still stand at this time and in this version.

PS:
This forum's text & posting scripts are goddamn weird ! If I press Enter it skips a line, making it two, if I press shift + Enter it makes it one, but then my space bar can't be used anymore once I add another line that way, except I copy already existing text in there. Wtf is with moddb's weird forum !

Edit:
Also had a crash while fighting chaos after having played for a few hours. Warnings.log didn't list anything useful. Might be that the AI tried to use something that caused the crash.

Edited by: UsernameUsernameRev

I actually made a thread about the IG's poor performance and outclassing at nearly every level two years ago. I was utterly ignored despite nearly everyone agreeing with me. The recent update gave them a nice buff, but they still need a lot of work to be viable long term. At least now they can hold on a little longer since the infantry do more damage. Good luck getting them to properly buff IG artillery or tanks, it will never happen. They buff it in one spot but nerf it in another. Literally just give them HP, damage, and armor boosts and leave it. Giving them extra damage and then decreasing armor pen is just stupid, or giving them an HP boost and removing armor is completely pointless. They are seemingly terrified of buffing the guard in any meaningful way. Which is funny because the IG are one of the largest and most powerful armies in WH40k, known for their support power, tanks, and endless numbers that rival Orks and Tyranids combined. Don't even get me started on the baneblades, which are criminally underpowered. IG sucked in the base game, and they aren't very good in UA. Oh well.

Edited by: Admiral_Gaarn